Biosensor Assay Enhancement Through AC Electrokinetic Microstirring; Conference paper

摘要

A microstirring tool is developed to improve binding rates in biosensor devices by an order of magnitude. AC electric fields generate fluid motion through the well documented but unexploited phenomenon, Electrothermal Flow, where the circulating flow redirects or stirs the fluid, providing more binding opportunities between suspended and wall-immobilized molecules. Simulations and experiments show improvement by a factor of 6-13. This is applicable to diffusion limited assays of different formats, from handheld microfluidic to benchtop microarray. Electrothermal microstirring is a tool that can be incorporated in existing devices, to speed up, for example, food- borne pathogen detection, or portable medical diagnostics.